The present invention relates generally to articles of furniture and, more particularly, to chairs having an upholstered chair frame supported from a stationary base assembly.
As is well known, motion-type articles of furniture, such as reclining chairs and rocking chairs, have an upholstered chair frame supported for movement from a stationary platform or base assembly. For example, most platform-type rocking chairs generally include an upholstered chair frame which is supported for fore and aft rocking movement on a wooden base assembly.
Traditionally, conventional base assemblies have been fabricated from a pair of wooden side rails that are interconnected by a pair of transversely oriented wooden cross rails to form a rigid box-like platform structure. Prior to such assembly, the wooden rail components are cut to size and pre-drilled for providing a series of mounting apertures for the subsequent assembly thereof. The wooden rail components are typically assembled utilizing a combination of dowel pins, adhesives and fasteners to ensure proper alignment and structural rigidity. As such, secondary clamping operations are commonly employed during assembly of the wooden base assembly to align the components and accommodate complete curing of the adhesive. As will be appreciated, the parallelism and squareness of the laterally-spaced wooden side rails, as well as the length dimension of the wooden cross rails, must be precise for ultimately providing proper alignment and balancing of the moveable chair frame on the wooden base assembly.
While conventional wooden base assemblies have performed satisfactorily for their intended purpose, the ever increasing cost and lack of availability of high quality hardwood materials is a major concern for furniture manufacturers. Moreover, in an effort to deproliferate the number of independent chair frames and base assemblies currently produced for various models of chairs, furniture manufacturers have begun utilizing modular frame components and assembly techniques which can be used for assembling "universal" chair frames and base assemblies for use in motion-type chairs. However, the process limitations associated with assembling wooden frame structures have severely limited the application of the above-noted modularity concepts thereto. To this end, the need exists to develop alternatives to wooden base assemblies which overcome the noted disadvantages and concomitantly provide improved strength, smoother balanced chair motion and which utilize modular frame components that can be precisely located and secured during assembly.